Superintendent Update for Families

We are in the throes of autumn and soon will be celebrating Halloween 🎃, Thanksgiving 🦃, and, well, you know what comes after that...🎄🧑🏻‍🎄⛄. For now we are very thankful for the terrific start of the school year and the amazing weather that we have had to support it. Most of our classrooms have taken advantage of being outside while our athletic teams have really made the most of the dry, comfortable air. All in all, it has been a magnificent start to the school year and we have all of our students, staff, and families to thank for making it great!

Happy fall! 🌰 🍂

As you may have read recently in the Keene Sentinel, Hinsdale High School is one of the high schools that has been identified by Winchester as a plausible destination for its high school students in the near future. Earlier in March, Keene High School notified Winchester that the tuition contract that was expiring in June 2027 would not be renewed, requiring Winchester to form a search committee and engage with surrounding school districts to explore a possible tuition contract relationship for its roughly 130 high school students. Three school districts have emerged as viable options for such a relationship including Pioneer Valley (Northfield, MA) and Monadnock Regional, as well as Hinsdale.

While this is still very much in the exploration phase, Winchester has scheduled a discussion forum for October 30 to hear their stakeholders’ input on what they would like to see in their next high school. On November 21, Winchester will be holding a high school information night and the three potential high schools will be on hand to present their information to families and other stakeholders, allowing time to answer questions and explore the details of what each school has to offer. Ideally, there will be another discussion forum in early January at which stakeholders will share their input on which two schools they will choose from when the town goes to vote on March 11, 2025. Prior to this forum, the middle school students at Winchester will hold a mock voting process in which they will select, by majority vote, the high school with which they would like to partner. Those results will be shared at the January forum as well. The 2025-2026 year would be used for developing budgets for the new arrangement and Winchester students would first enroll in their new high school in the 2026-2027 school year.

While we are at the very early stages of this process, we will continue to keep you posted throughout the year.

We launched our strategic planning process with an orientation on September 10 with approximately 25 stakeholders on four different priority teams: Teaching and Learning, Finance and Facilities, Community Relations, and Culture and Climate. The four teams are actively recruiting additional members and meeting for the first time in the month of October to organize data collection, review, synthesis, and strategy development in time to make recommendations to the steering committee for the late spring. The resulting product of this work will be the roadmap for the school district for the next five years, giving everyone in Hinsdale the blueprint for school district goals and action steps to shape the futures of our students and community. Please consider joining one of our four priority teams by email dryan@hnhsd.org. Should you not wish to participate on a team, please be open to providing input and feedback when solicited or when you have the opportunity.

HASP is up and running and holy smokes is it active! Mrs. O'Malley has shared recently that we have 114 elementary students with a wait list and 89 middle school students enrolled in 16 different enrichment programs - unbelievable! Check out their website and all of the information about how it is funded, operated, and enjoyed by so many students and families in our community. We are so grateful to have the leadership and staff of HASP giving it their all, everyday, for our kids.

We shared last year that the school district was awarded a Bravely grant through the Next Generation Learning Challenge to explore how it would operationalize its Portrait of a Learner. A small team was formed in late spring to work with facilitators from NGLC to design the yearlong project, and the team settled on reviewing how to redesign the middle school experience. Having met a few more times since the school year resumed, the team has developed the question “How will we shift to student-centered and community-based learning in middle school?” and will continue to refine the approach to answering it. Along the way will be investigations into the middle school experience, solicitation of input from the stakeholders in concert with the current strategic planning process, and research into different middle school programs from around the nation. As the work intensifies, information will be available on the school district website to help keep people informed and up to date on the progress.

School security as it relates to student safety is an unfortunate topic to have to discuss, however in this day and age it is a requirement for schools to have sound plans to prevent and/or respond to emergencies that take place on campus.The elevation of violence in schools across the nation is increasing and in Hinsdale we are doing everything we can to provide the safest environment for all of our students and staff.

One of our most recent activities includes the reactivation of the school campus security team, a group of school and town officials who work together to actively improve the safety and security plans for the district. The team includes leadership representatives from HES and HMHS, the Hinsdale Fire Department, Hinsdale Police Department, school district facilities director, SAU office staff, and school district leadership. The school security experience that these folks bring to the team is vast and informed from different organizations, so the work of the team will be high level. For reasons of security, logistical and tactical information that is discussed in these meetings typically remains confidential, however general information will be shared in the form of training, communication preferences, and visible hardscape modifications (such as reconfigured locked doorways, etc.). The team met earlier this month and is scheduled to meet again in November.

I encourage our adult guardians and community members to watch the video below for a unique perspective on students and school safety.

Earlier in the year we sent a request to all of our families to opt in for phone alerts in the event we need to send notifications that need to be received immediately. This is the same alert system we will use to send out snow day cancellations and any other important, timely news. If you would like to opt in to the text message alert system, please text the word “Yes” to 79041 and you will receive a response from BrightArrow confirming your participation.

The Superintendent Update for Families is a quarterly newsletter designed to provide brief insight to several issues, activities, and events in the Hinsdale School District. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Superintendent David Ryan at dryan@hnhsd.org.